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Seinfeld needed control

FOS Larry Getlen, writing for the NY Post, recounts one of Jerry Seinfeld‘s anecdotes from his recent taping of TV Land’s Sit-Down Comedy with David Steinberg. The erstwhile TV star says…

…that he owes his incredible comedy success to a television failure– an ill-fated, three-episode stint on the show Benson. Seinfeld played the governor’s joke writer, but the character was underdeveloped and went nowhere…So the producers decided to fire him. The only problem? “They didn’t bother to tell me.”

An angry Seinfeld said it was then that he decided to dedicate himself fully to the art of stand-up. “I’m gonna be a comedian,” he recalled thinking, “because I can control that.”

Getlen frequently contributes items about standup comics to Bankrate.com and his byline appears regularly in the NY Post. He is the editor of “The Idiot’s Guide to Jokes.”